Seamstress must pay bride $1,500 for broken zipper on wedding dress

When you find the perfect wedding dress, you might feel like you want to wear it forever. But if you actually have to be sewn into it, you’ll probably change your mind.

One bride, Samantha Shea, faced just such a situation, and turned it into a lawsuit. The zipper on Shea’s wedding dress broke only an hour before the ceremony, so she paid two housekeepers at the Gansevoort Hotel to sew her into the gown, which kept her from using the bathroom for six hours.

Shea had originally paid Dalia Cohen, a seamstress, $600 to alter the dress. Cohen said that she replaced the original broken zipper on the dress. When the zipper split on Shea’s wedding day, bridesmaid Joanne Zambuto called Cohen, who said she could make it to the hotel to fix the dress in two hours. But Shea elected to be sewn in instead.

Shea sued Cohen for breaching their oral agreement to alter the dress, requesting $1,000. Cohen said she was “devastated” by the incident, but said that the split zipper was a result of “nature,” and not her fault.

District Judge Gary Knobel found in favor of Shea, and ordered Cohen to pay her $1,500. "The ensuing 'nightmare,' as the plaintiff described it at trial, allegedly robbed the plaintiff of experiencing the joy of her very special day,” Knobel wrote.